When Irenie Ekkeshis's eye started
to itch she assumed it would soon settle down. It didn't. Before long,
she found herself in excruciating pain and lost her sight in that eye.
And the cause may have been nothing more than handling her contact
lenses with wet fingers.
One Saturday morning in January 2011,
Irenie Ekkeshis woke up to find her right eye was streaming with tears.
So she went to the chemist's and picked up some eye drops. "I thought I had a little infection that would clear up by Monday. But by that evening I couldn't bear to go in my kitchen because I found the fluorescent lights too bright. It was painful."
Ekkeshis went straight to Moorfield's Eye Hospital where doctors gave her a corneal scrape - a procedure that involves taking cells from the surface of the eyeball.
"It was as horrible as it sounds - you see the needle heading towards your eye. It was excruciatingly painful, even though they use numbing eye drops," she says.
Within days she was told she had Acanthamoeba Keratitis (AK), a rare but serious eye infection caused by a micro-organism that's common in tap water, sea water and swimming pools.
"I was feeling very shocked and frightened, as by then I had lost the vision in my right eye. It was like looking through a foggy bathroom mirror. I could see colours and shapes but not much else," she says.
The illness affects about 125 people in the UK every year - and the vast majority of cases are associated with the use of contact lenses.
"I hadn't had a shower or gone swimming in my lenses," Ekkeshis says. "But I learned that even washing your hands and not drying them properly before handling lenses can cause it."
"I suppose I was a self-conscious pre-teen," she says.
By the time she was 30 she wore daily disposable lenses, the kind you throw away each evening, and she had never had any trouble with them.
But AK, in which an amoeba invades the cornea - the clear front part of the eye - turned out to be a major problem.
But her eye didn't respond to the treatment, and because the cornea has the highest density of pain receptors in the body, she was soon in agony.
at first, Ekkeshis was given antiseptic eye drops to take every hour.
She was told that as the infection had been caught early it should be
cured in a matter of weeks."The pain got worse as the infection developed," she says. "At times it was unbearable and was almost impossible to control, even with the strongest painkillers."
She could not work and eventually quit her job as a travel company director.
Her eye streamed for months until doctors started to get the infection under control. The pain also started to subside. But by now the cornea of her right eye was scarred, leaving her vision in this eye blurred.
Contact lens dos and don'ts
DO:- Wash and dry your hands before handling your lenses
- Apply your lenses before putting on make-up
- Keep your eyes closed when using hairspray or other aerosols
- Use your lenses for swimming, hot tubs or water sports, unless wearing goggles
- Wear your lenses when showering unless you keep your eyes firmly closed
- Wet your lenses with saliva
In May 2013 she had a corneal transplant, which appeared to be a success.
"It was amazing to be able to see through both eyes for the first time in a long time," she says.
However, after 10 days Ekkeshis noticed the sight in her right eye was becoming cloudy again.
"I had a scan which confirmed the AK had moved in to the new transplant. I was back to square one. It was devastating."
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